Ethical issues in Gaming

Ethical issues in Gaming

What do we mean by ethics in gaming? The ethics of gaming consists of violence, stereotyping, education and addiction. These ethical issues of gaming can affect the players in many different ways, but in saying that it is the player’s responsibility to be aware of these negative effects, but also the game developers should also take some part of the responsibility. The games although they have some negative effects they can also give many good ones, such as teamwork and communication.

In studies from Indiana University School of Medicine, using brain-scanning technology, researchers found that players of violent video games, as compared to non-violent games, suffered decreased self-control and attention. They also found that violent video games can increase the player’s aggressive thoughts and behaviour in both a laboratory setting and real life.

As the video game industry has gotten older, the games the industry produces gets more and more realistic, mostly featuring violence, blood and gore and anti-social behaviour which is creating concern with parents, teachers and other professionals. There has been speculation that many school shootings in America have been rumoured to have been caused by violent games, such as Doom and Manhunt.

The video games industry have realised that males tend to enjoy playing violent games more than females, and as such have begun to cater to a more male audience, with things such as mostly male characters, under dressed female characters and a heavier influence on the violent aspect of the game rather than the story within it. In some video games the only female characters within games are prostitutes and the game encourages you to kill them for example Grand Theft Auto.

The main ethical issue the gaming industry needs to watch out for is racism, as what one person could see as fine, and have nothing racist in a particular game, can be deemed offensive from someone else’s perspective. A good example of this would be resident evil 5, in which finds Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar in a town in Africa fighting zombies. To someone that does not know about the story of the game they would see it as a white American man mindlessly slaughtering hundreds of black Africans.

My opinion is that, although games may be violent and cause aggression in some people, games benefit people more than they do not benefit them by giving the player a release from the real world and have fun doing so.

Bibliography -

http://www.ethicapublishing.com/ethical/3CH12.pdf

http://www.topnews.in/health/violent-video-games-prompt-aggressive-behaviour-213378

http://www.topnews.in/health/playing-violent-games-can-increase-your-pain-threshold-216837